8 Ups and 7 Downs From WWE Raw (June 27)

Ups...

7. Fatal Five-Way

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WWE.com

So with Roman Reigns out of the picture for the buildup to Battleground, WWE had to keep the focus on the multi-man world title match while keeping a little distance between Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose. Enter the play-in matches.

AJ Styles and John Cena made the case that they should be inserted into the world title match, so Stephanie McMahon ordered two singles matches (Styles/Ambrose and Cena/Rollins) to see if they would earn their way into the match. Each man cost the other a shot, leaving us right where we began the night, but with tensions increased between Styles and Cena.

Sure, it was a lot of machinations to end up with the same title match we had last week, but with Reigns suspended, this was a decent way to put focus on the match and raise the stakes to two Raw matches.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.